France
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The origins of painting on walls
I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the origins of painting on walls, and the evolution of the form over time, up to the current vogue for street art. While the walls of caves were not made of brick, they did nonetheless provide people with an early canvass for their painting. The transition from these depictions of […]
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Faux ghostsigns
Sometimes hand painted signs on buildings are created to look old and weathered intentionally. The example pictured (original photo on Flickr) was produced in 2003 for the Disney film, ‘Miracle’. (Does anyone have a clip showing where and how it features in the film?) Another Disney example is this sign for the ‘New Orleans Trading […]
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The ‘Books of Clio’ is a great blog for ghostsigns in France
I’ve just started to follow this blog which is regularly throwing up interesting material. Above and below are three of my favourites from the last couple of months (from here, here and here), the first for the interesting arrow shape, the Zanussi one because I’ve never seen a washing machine brand advertised in this way […]
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Walls by Deidi von Schaewen
Deidi von Schaewen’s ‘Walls’ is a lovely hardback book that documents hand painted advertising on walls in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s geographical coverage is noteworthy with examples from Berlin, London, New York, Paris and elsewhere in France. Most of the photography is in black and white with a handful of colour images, all of […]
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The beauty of cracking paint on Paris’ trompes l’oeil
Adam at Invisible Paris has written this blog post about the changing state of the city’s trompes l’oeil. This example in partticular caught my eye, the craking and peeling of the paint creating something new from something old. It is similar to the way that some ghostsigns deteriorate, with the paint sitting on the surface of […]
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Four layers of Dubonnet palimpsest
Great discovery here from Sebastien in which he has identified four signs for the same brand vying for position on the same wall. There’s a great gallery of French ghost signs here (Dubonnet here) and my posts on the country are here with additional photos in this Flickr set.